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Bedroom community without a parlor

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
01/05/2013 07:00:35 AM EST

Well, town officials and residents were spared the weeping and gnashing of teeth of an emotional debate about gambling and its economic benefits, now that a Canadian casino operator has decided not pursue a slots parlor in Littleton.

Clairvest, a Canadian investment firm that operates casinos, announced Wednesday it had dropped plans to bring up to 1,250 slot machines, which would have been housed in an 100,000-square-foot building at The Point, a 90-acre, mixed-use project under development on Great Road near Interstate 495.

With the Jan.15 deadline approaching for filing a permit with the state -- and the $400,000 nonrefundable fee that accompanies it -- Clairvest indicated it has opted to focus on other sites in the commonwealth.

Town Administrator Keith Bergman and other officials have had informal, confidential conversations with Clairvest for a few months, but the details only became public after a meeting with the company in December.

As previously mentioned, aside from the accessibility of major highways and a rail line to Boston, Littleton seemed an unlikely location for a gambling mecca. Town officials had indicated that any concrete proposal would need to be ratified by residents, most of whom it's safe to assume didn't choose to live there because of its slots-parlor potential.

However, given its revenue projections, a slots parlor would have been a tempting proposal.

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As Selectmen Chairman Gregg Champney mentioned in a letter to the editor in Friday's Sun, Littleton must foster commercial-industrial growth to ease the tax burden on the town's residential-property owners. However, any economic expansion must also coexist with the town's character.

A slots parlor, no matter how much tax revenue it produced, certainly didn't fit that model.

However, the potential of the Point to attract several businesses -- thereby generating jobs and tax receipts from a wide base -- looks to be the best blueprint for economic growth.

Warren's Senate moment

Massachusetts made history -- again -- with the swearing in of Democrat Elizabeth Warren Thursday as the first female U.S. senator from the commonwealth.

It seems odd that a state with such a progressive bent hasn't already elected a woman to that position.

While we don't always agree with her liberal philosophy, we do appreciate this special occasion.

We also hope that like her predecessor, she will break with her party and cross the aisle occasionally to do what is best for the country.

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